Head of the Presidential Secretariat and Cabinet Secretary, Dr. Roger Luncheon announced this on Tuesday.

He told his regular post-Cabinet news conference at the Office of the President that Cabinet was provided with a detailed report on the implementation of the restructuring of BERMINE, the crisis-plagued bauxite company with operations in the Berbice River.

Some 400-odd BERMINE workers at the Everton and Kwakwani locations in the Berbice River were recently served individual letters terminating their services with the company as part of the restructuring process.

Those letters were from BERMINE Chairman, Brassington, who is also Director of the Aroaima Bauxite Company (ABC).

Luncheon said specific attention was paid to the near-completion of President Bharrat Jagdeo's intervention to provide house lots to the BERMINE workers at Everton and Kwakwani whose services were severed.

More than 200 such transactions have been completed and additional means of service have been dealt with, he assured.

Luncheon said too, that Cabinet was advised that $212M out of the $215M Severance Training Grant Programme has been paid out to the affected workers and as far as the pension plan goes, a deficit has and is being financed by the Government.

The outstanding statutory declarations as undertaken by the administration for the National Insurance Scheme and the Inland Revenue Department (IRD) are both being met, he noted.

According to Luncheon, the cost of the supply of water and electricity to the community has now been assumed by the administration, while the Ministry of Health is managing and maintaining the hospital at the bauxite company's location.

"In the next Cabinet session, the socio economic report on the Berbice bauxite communities will be examined and discussed...that report is compiled by a multi-agency technical team that visited the area and (had) indepth discussions and reviews with the citizens and workers," he told reporters.

Luncheon noted that ABC, as planned, has issued re-hiring notices for 200 of the dismissed BERMINE workers who are now being re-employed at the much higher ABC wages rate and conditions.

Following visits by President Jagdeo on June 20 and 24 last to Kwakwani and Everton, respectively, two committees were formed with employees from BERMINE and representatives of the Government, ABC and BIDCO (Bauxite Industry Development Company).

The first committee dealt with the separation package that would be paid to workers. That package was settled on June 27 following discussions between President Jagdeo and the committee.

The second committee dealt with the way forward and its concept proposal was formed on the basis of the merger between BERMINE and ABC, an arrangement which came into effect from the first of this month. - (MARK RAMOTAR)